Bill Ashcroft

Chapter 9: Translation and Transformation

Translation has become one of the most prominent issues in post-colonial studies over
recent years. The debates about translation in the field have revolved around the translation
of vernacular texts into English. But the kind of inner translation that occurs when writers
write in a second language, could be the point at which Translation Studies and PostColonial Studies meet.
The argument of this chapter is that translation and transformation overlaps in postcolonial
literatures:

Translation: the movement of text from a source language to a target language.

Transformation: the reshaping of text in target language by the cultural nuances of
a source language. It transforms the writers original medium of communication
into English and transforms Standard English into something else.
This intersection of translation and transformation is possible because the context of the
post-colonial writer is profoundly transcultural.
Most discussion on Post-Colonial Translation overlooks this intersection, by treating postcolonial writing in English as if it were translation. The absence of an original text in the
vernacular makes the post-colonial writing in English a demonstration of the productive
instability of language itself.

THE THIRD SPACE OF TRANSLATION

If our language "is us", then how can our cultural identity be translated? That is definitely a
myth.
Language is transformative, a space of translation; it is unstable. There is a space of
unintelligibility that exits in the interstices of all languages. Because language is never a
simple correspondence between signs an referents, a simple translation of reality into
words, all language occupies the Third Space of enunciation in its provisionality and
untranslatability. This is the space that post-colonial writers inhabit between the imperial
and vernacular cultures.
The issue of faithfulness: Walter Benjamin rejects the notion that translation can be
faithful to the original text, as the task of the translator is derivative, ultimate, ideational.
Benjamins point is that it is language that presents the problem. Poets are doomed to be
unfaithful to experience just as translators are doomed to be unfaithful to the poet, because
language itself is unfaithful.
Post-colonial writers have the added experience of being unfaithful to two languages, and
these languages can be unfaithful to experience. Language does not reflect but invents, or
re-presents the experience. So the post-colonial writer is able of recreating experience.

The decision post-colonial writers make is not just how to write between languages, but
how to make language be both source and target.

TRANSLATION AND POWER: TRANSLATING INTO ENGLISH

The use of translation as a means of domination occurs in many ways in imperial discourse.
For example:
The issue of naming. Naming has an important place, for example, in imperial
cartography. Names invoke ownership, because to have the power to name is to
have the power of possession. Naming is a form of translation because it inserts the
named object or location into a particular narrative. If indigenous inhabitants have a
sense of inherent or cultural belonging to a place, this place may be controlled, by
being familiarized and domesticated through language. Naming is metonymic of the
authority of the imperial discourse.
The issue of cultural sensitivity in legislative documents that re-interpret cultural
concepts. For example, in The Treaty of Waitongi, forty-six Maori chiefs ceded to
the Crown the Sovereignty over their territories, but what did the English and the
Maori understood by the word sovereignty? This treaty is based on a simple
deception embedded in the translation of the word sovereignty. In this instance the
naming process involved not a place on the map, but a concept, the concept of
sovereignty.

TRANSLATION AND POWER: TRANSLATING OUT OF THE VERNACULAR

Fortunately, the translation of vernacular texts into English is increasingly seen as a means
of cultural empowerment. This kind of translation opens up a potentially huge readership
both in the post-colonial countries themselves and the world, and becomes a vehicle of
cultural communication, and a mode of cultural survival.
The translators work consists of continual choices about which idiomatic expression to
leave. The text must negotiate the space between intelligibility and cultural specificity, a
space in which the postcolonial text in English comes into being. Writers and translators
must choose the particular balance of vernacular and translation to convey cultural
difference at the same time as they ensure intelligibility. There is a kind of third language
that originates in the overlap of the vernacular voice and the colonial language.

TRANSLATION INTO VERNACULAR LANGUAGE

The most fascinating consequence of the translation of English texts into vernacular
languages is the effect on the vernacular literatures themselves:
it may create new literatures (like the Gikuyu novel)
it may revive literatures that might have become moribund.

it demonstrates the transformative power of appropriation: the influence of English

created imitative forms in Indian languages but at the same time this influence
provoked entirely new forms. For example: Srikantaiah, author, writer and translator
of Kannada literature, said: There are two ways to develop our mother tongue.
Either the native language should be strong with itself. When that is not so, we have
to gain this strength through translations. Whereas the English texts empower the
local culture by speaking to a potential global audience, the transformation of
ancient literary traditions with modern genres may impart new life to local
literatures.

TRANSFORMATION: THE LANGUAGE OF POST-COLONIAL LITERATURES

There is an overlap between translation and transformation in post-colonial literatures due
to the transcultural environment of this post-colonial society.
The author thinks it is a mistake to simple call post-colonial writing translation. The
writer of a post-colonial text has more freedom to decide the types of audience for whom
the text is written; more opportunity to make original creative decisions. These decisions
are the authors to make and not demanded by an original text. Transformation occurs in the
target language under the creative influence of a source language. The post-colonial writer
has none of the problems of translation.
When the post-colonial writer enters the productive space of language he or she can be said
to create a new language (transformed English). The function of the language is to operate
as a metonym of culture and race.

THE METONYMIC GAP

Language is metonymic of the culture, that is, linguistic variation stands for cultural
difference. The metonymic gap is the cultural gap formed when writers transform English
according to the needs of their source culture. This occurs when they insert unglossed
words or phrases from a first language, when they use concepts, allusions or references that
may be unknown, or when they transform the literary language by adherence to vernacular
syntax or rhythms. These variations become synecdochic of the writers culture. The local
writer represents his or her world to the coloniser in the metropolitan language, and at the
same time, signals and emphasises a difference from it.
The metonymic gap is inserted into the texts through specific strategies. While these
strategies produces a communicable text, they remind us of the untranslatability of
language. They are:
Glossing:
Parenthetic translations of single words: e.g. he took him to his obi (hut) are the most
common authorial intrusion in cross-cultural texts. As glossing gives the translated word,
the receptor culture acquires the higher status.

 Untranslated words:
The technique of leaving some vernacular words untranslated is a widely used device for
conveying the sense of cultural peculiarity which forces the reader to engage with the
vernacular culture: e.g. He had learnt since then to walk like an ogwumagada
Interlanguage:
This term refers to the linguistic system used by second-language learners, in which
utterances that are not standard in the dominant language should be seen as genuine and
creative rather than mistaken versions of the original. It is the fusion of the linguistic
structures of two languages: e.g. I was a palm-wine drunkard since I was a boy of ten years
of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. In those days we did
not know other money except COWRIES, so that everything was very cheap, and my father
was the richest man in town.
Syntactic fusions:
They are linguistic adaptations of the rhythms and textures of vernacular speech to standard
orthography.
e.g. Man, I brisk in the galley first thing next down,
brewing lil coffee; fog coil from the sea
like the kettle steaming when I put it down
slow, slow cause I couldnt believe what I see
Code switching and vernacular transcription:
It is the most common method of inserting alterity (otherness), that is, interweaving two or
more dialectical forms, revealing societal complexity, including class and cultural
differences as well as communication between groups. In the Caribbean novel the narrator
reports in Standard English and the dialogues are in the vernacular language: e.g. So this is
the way you use my yard! was her greeting to both young women. Tou bring youdirty
friends into me place
The metonymic gap, the space between languages, is seen through an example in the text.
There is an aboriginal poem, an aboriginal lullaby which maintains most aboriginal words,
rhythm and sounds but becomes understandable because these words are written in roman
script. Though being untranslatable, the sentences make sense and the aboriginal values are
communicated.
By using the various appropriation strategies, writers establish otherness and difference and
at the same time take some measure of political control of discourse.
The postcolonial writer may appropriate the language, but he or she must insert that text
into the western-dominated systems of publishing, distribution and readership for the
strategy to have any effect.